


reflections in broken soldiers

by simplyclockwork



Category: Sherlock - Fandom, Sherlock BBC
Genre: Other, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 20:29:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyclockwork/pseuds/simplyclockwork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little drabble of thoughts between broken soldiers</p>
            </blockquote>





	reflections in broken soldiers

**Author's Note:**

> No, this isn't shipping them (though I ship John with everyone everywhere in everything always and forever, my god). I wrote this at about 4am on my iPhone. It's terribly vague, and I've no idea what happens at the end, so use your imagination.

Staring down at the man with the sandy hair, the crippled shoulder, Sebastian sees something of himself; in the lines around John Watson's mouth, the subtle slant of his eyes, he catches hints and gentle reminders. Signs of familiarity and self-awareness.

But it's in the army doctor's rage that he identifies himself most. In the slick burn and blaze of anger; the brittle edge of emotional rampage in the small man's words and voice.

John Watson is not a man driven by his emotions: he is a man honed in the use of feeling for his own benefit. He channels his anger, burns it as fuel and fodder for the movements of his shattered, broken body: salves his tears and dappled hints of sorrow into calming balms on gaping wounds: smears blissful smiles and genuine joy across the faces of sociopaths.

This is the man who has broken Sherlock Holmes; who has made him feel; ruined Moriarty's shiny new toy.

It's a shame, Sebastian thinks, to destroy a creature so rare, a genuine one of a kind work of miasma as John H. Watson.

After all, the world is slick and brimming with sociopaths; psychopaths; bloodthirsty men of guns. They come in twos and threes, in handfuls and pairs and in the hundreds. John Watsons come in ones and singles, an endangered species. It's like killing something exotic; something fresh and new and gasping with life and mystery, and Sebastian's mortified; subtly disgusted and unravelled, but accepting.

He's wonderfully distraught in the red of his scope sight on the army doctor's chest; chafes and pushes at orders; shudders under dreaded certainty.

Even as he bends his head to stare dead-pan through the scope of the black, blood, shadows and red and broken soldiers, Sebastian can't help but feel like he's destroying something disgustingly sacred.

\----------------

Sebastian Moran is a darkly marked man with fingers dipped deep in blood; dipped willing and lovingly between ribs to rip out beating pulse points and off-tempo double beats, and John knows him.

Recognizes, identifies, reminisces and stutters, brain grinding to a halt, shock making his fingers thick and useless; fumbling clumsy and wild against the Sauer tucked against the small of his back.

Sands and sun and blazing heat; two men sprawled in near-twin stains of red under bullet-spray rain, lungs so thick with lifeblood that it spilled up over their bottom lips, hearts beating in spiraling mismatched drum beats.

Colonel Moran: shot to the left side, bullet under his arm and rattling inside his ribs, and the blood of thirteen once-good men sprayed in messy, lazy arcs on his palms; dried between the curve of each finger. Filling in lifelines like buried trenches.

He remembers bending over him; recalls with sharp, biting clarity the rough scrape of combat gear against his hands, tense fabric pulling at the edges of his fingerprints. Then the drag of cotton against the rough edges of the entry point; the digging of quick and dirty fingers for the bullet, the man screaming, howling, keening all the while.

And soothing words. John's rough-raw voice and then pain, explosions in his shoulder and starburst in his eyes, ricochet through his head.

Then sand against his cheek, a deadened sense of bemusement; silence and dark and shiny agony for nine month's shaky recovery.

He'd wondered about that man--about this man. If he'd survived, if he'd saved him.

The answer lies in the arms cradling the sniper rifle; the slightly tilted head and the roping scars across Sebastian's ribcage; the way he carries himself as if lopsided on one side by the clumsily healed bone scarring of a long-time ago bullet wound.

John stares down the barrel of the long range firearm; slips his hand around to his back and gropes the Sig Sauer from its hiding place against his spine.

They're frightfully alike, the broken doctor-soldier and the disgraced Colonel, and John's hand doesn't shake when he levels the handgun.

He's got no chance, not against a gun like Moran's, one all too similar to the one that brought him to Sherlock in the first place.

Moriarty's right hand man and sub-sequential toy smiles; looks pained and lowers his eyes to the scope, feeling out the crosshairs like an extended part of himself.

John parts his lips and breathes around his teeth, the Sauer a familiar weight in his hand.

The gunshot is like thunder and lightning, deafening, and there's silence and fire and gunpowder fireworks burning in the dead of winter. White, everything briefly drained of hues. And then colour, splashing back, slipping back, red red red and orange yellow; warning signs and hazard symbols and the flash of emergency vehicles.

And still silence, like the sound has bled away from the world.

 

All he ever wanted was silence.


End file.
